Christian Schuerch, PhD

Acute myeloid leukemia is a subtype of blood cancer with a poor prognosis that is caused by genetic mutations in blood stem cells. The treatment given to most patients has not changed much since the 1970s, and only about a quarter of patients survive more than five years. Therapy-resistant leukemic stem cells are the main cause of treatment failure and relapse. Leukemic stem cells are difficult to study because they are very heterogeneous and constitute only a tiny fraction of all leukemic cells in each patient. They are hard to kill with chemotherapy drugs and can hide from the immune system by forming a protective leukemic niche in the bone marrow. Understanding how leukemic stem cells interact with their microenvironment in the leukemic niche could help find new ways to treat acute myeloid leukemia. In this project, the researchers will use a combination of novel single-cell technologies to study the bone marrow of acute myeloid leukemia patients in detail. They will investigate the precise location of leukemic stem cells in the bone marrow, their interactions with the niche, and how gene mutations and gene expression profiles affect these relationships. This will allow identifying the resistance mechanisms used by leukemic stem cells of patients that did not respond to treatment. In the future, this approach will enable to identify the most effective combination of therapies for each patient, paving a way to cure acute myeloid leukemia.